3. iii
Table of Contents
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v
S. K. Keltner, The Peculiarities of Love and Sex
Chapter 1. Powers of Eros . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Introduction 1
Plato, Symposium – The Speeches of Aristophanes and Socrates 3
Lorde, The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power 12
Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, and Richard Lannon, Archimedes’ Principle: How We Sense the
Inner Worlds of Other Hearts 15
Chapter 2. The Nature of Sex—Gender, Race, Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Introduction 27
Charles Darwin, Sexual Selection 30
Sigmund Freud, The Infantile Sexuality 37
Anne Fausto-Sterling, Nature 50
Chapter 3. Family, Kinship, Identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Introduction 65
Emma Goldman, Marriage and Love 67
Hortense J. Spillers, Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book 71
Judith, Imitation and Gender Insubordination 86
Chapter 4. Economies of Desire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Introduction 97
Isabel Molina Guzmán and Angharad N. Valdivia, Brain, Brow, and Booty:
Latina Iconicity in U.S. Popular Culture 99
bell, Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance 110
David M., Is There a History of Sexuality? 121
4. iv Table of Contents
Chapter 5. In Search of Eros. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
Introduction 135
Anne Koedt, The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm 138
Evelynn M. Hammonds, Toward a Genealogy of Black Female Sexuality:
The Problematic of Silence 143
Abby Wilkerson, Disability, Sex Radicalism, and Political Agency 152
Chapter 6. Health, Rights, Justice. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
Introduction 167
Harriet A. Washington, The American Janus of Medicine and Race 169
Kimala Price, What is Reproductive Justice? How Women of Color Activists Are Redefining
the Pro-Choice Paradigm 180
David France, The Memorial Service 192
Chapter 7. Pleasures and Dangers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
Introduction 197
C. J. Pascoe, Becoming Mr. Cougar: Institutionalizing Heterosexuality and
Masculinity at River High 199
Danielle Keats Citron, Digital Hate 213
Melinda Chateauvert, “The Revolution Is Finally Here!” Sex Work and Strategic Sex 224
5. v
Introduction
The Peculiarities of Love and Sex
S. K. Keltner
In The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872), a fascinating (and much neglected) study
following On the Origin of Species (1859) and The Descent of Man, or Selection in Relation to Sex (1871),
Charles Darwin catalogued, with minute detail, similarities in emotional expressions across generations, ge-
ographies, cultures, artistic representations, and species before theorizing their evolutionary causes according
to principles of inherited habits, antithetical reactions to opposing emotions, and “nerve-force” or reflex. The
emotion of disgust, for example, is expressed by a turning up of the lip, a contraction of the nose, a turning
away from the object of disgust, and an expiration of sound. Disgust is expressed toward a variety of objects
but probably hails from a physical reaction toward offensive smells or disease. Anxiety, grief, fear, anger, hor-
ror, surprise—all emotions are shown to bear similar expressions across peoples and animals. Darwin’s treat-
ment of the emotion of love, however, is comparatively brief. Love “is one of the strongest of which the mind
is capable” and yet “can hardly be said to have any proper or peculiar means of expression.”
Although the emotion of love, for instance that of a mother for her infant, is one of the strongest of which
the mind is capable, it can hardly be said to have any proper or peculiar means of expression; and this is
intelligible, as it has not habitually led to any special line of action. No doubt, as affection is a pleasur-
able sensation, it generally causes a gentle smile and some brightening of the eyes. A strong desire to
touch the beloved person is commonly felt; and love is expressed by this means more plainly than by any
other. Hence we long to clasp in our arms those whom we tenderly love. We probably owe this desire to
inherited habit, in association with the nursing and tending of our children, and with the mutual caresses
of lovers. (Darwin 1872)
The most common feeling is “a strong desire to touch,” and touching the beloved is its plainest expression.
Dogs and cats, for example, “take pleasure in rubbing against…and being rubbed by” their human companions;
monkeys “delight in fondling and being fondled”; two chimpanzees, one of Darwin’s correspondences relates,
“mutually folded each other in their arms” and afterward “yelled with delight”; and humans seek “pleasure
from close contact,” whether through kissing (e.g., Europe), rubbing noses (e.g., New Zealand), or rubbing or
patting other parts of the other’s body. Longing to “clasp in our arms those whom we tenderly love,” Darwin
says, is most likely an “inherited habit” originating in caring for the young and sexual activity, “the mutual
caresses of lovers.” In Darwin’s taxonomy of love’s expressions, then, touching is the desire (“strong desire to
touch”), the expression (“expressed by” the “means” of touching), as well as the origin (“an inherited habit”
from touching). In his detailed study of the expression of the emotions, the only physical expression Darwin
identified across generations, peoples, cultures, and species, with respect to love, was the touch of an embrace.
If a lack of generalized expression besets love in general, what about the sexual expression of erotic love
or desire more specifically? Nothing seems more natural than erotic love, and certain authorities in our lives
never tire of assuring us of its “proper” and “essential” expression.Yet a comparative glance across history and
6. vi Introduction
cultures reveals that there is nothing constant about desire or even sex, excluding the basic fact that they most
definitely occur. The sociologist Rebecca Plante succinctly concludes that “[a]cts of sex exist in all cultures
and have existed throughout history, and these acts even involve the same basic set of body parts and hydraulic
motion, in effect. But there is no universal, absolute, unchanging set of laws, attitudes, or perspectives about
sex. We do not just ‘have sex,’ ‘do it,’ or ‘hook up.’ There is so much more to it than just drive, hormones,
or reproductive imperatives” (2006, 5). As such, Plante trades the singular ‘sexuality’ for the plural ‘sexuali-
ties’. Love and sex are not isolatable biological facts, or at least nothing of interest can be said of their bare
existence. Love and sex are not determined by any single or generalizable form or meaning—psychological,
social, or cultural. What interests us about love and sex is their meaning, which remains plural and diverse.
Sexualities are complex phenomena influenced by a variety of interrelated conditions and expressed in mul-
tiple ways. The World Health Organization (WHO) provides a useful working definition:
Sexuality is a central aspect of being human throughout life and encompasses sex, gender identities and
roles, sexual orientation, eroticism, pleasure, intimacy and reproduction. Sexuality is experienced and
expressed in thoughts, fantasies, desires, beliefs, attitudes, values, behaviours, practices, roles and rela-
tionships. While sexuality can include all of these dimensions, not all of them are always experienced
or expressed. Sexuality is influenced by the interaction of biological, psychological, social, economic,
political, cultural, ethical, legal, historical, religious and spiritual factors. (WHO 2020)
The WHO definition demonstrates how many differentiating roles are played by factors that may seem, at first
glance, unrelated to sexuality. We may further add to the differentiating influences listed here categories of race,
ethnicity, nation, and ability, as well as access to health services, education, technology, and social support.
Love, erotic love, desire, want, appetite, attraction, intimacy— despite how immediate and natural sexual-
ity may feel, it cannot be generalized, not even across the life span of a single individual. What seems natural
to one person at one point in time could seem completely unnatural to another or at another point in time. The
meaning of love and sex is intimately bound to a vast number of personal, social, and historical contingencies
and to how those contingencies shape sexual lives.
The thesis that sexuality is contingent challenges long-held biological assumptions about the nature of
bodies—especially one’s sex and sexual orientation. The biological concept of sex has been defined scientifi-
cally primarily in terms of sexual reproduction and the division of living things into male and female. Tradi-
tionally, a person’s sex has been associated with certain beliefs, attitudes, desires, aversions, and capacities.
Historically, women have been characterized, for example, as naturally passive, emotional, relational, irratio-
nal, weak, closer to nature, more constrained by their bodies, and inferior to men; in contrast, men have been
described as essentially active, rational, independent, strong, able to transcend nature, masters of their bodies,
and superior to women. The view that one’s anatomical makeup is a determining factor of intellectual, physi-
cal, emotional, social, and (hetero)sexual characteristics is known as biological essentialism. Biological es-
sentialism is the belief in a single metaphysical nature that causally determines the identity and characteristics
of a specific group of entities.
In response to the theory of biological essentialism, sex researchers in the 1950s and 1960s began distin-
guishing between ‘sex’ and ‘gender’. Although not the first to use the terms, U.S.-American psychoanalyst
Robert Stoller is generally recognized as the authoritative source of early uses of the distinction. Stoller pub-
lished the first systematic treatment of the sex–gender distinction in his Sex and Gender: On the Development
of Masculinity and Femininity (1968), where he presented his studies of gender identity. The language of sex
and gender was meant to clarify the manner in which one’s role or identity could come into conflict with social
and cultural expectations based on one’s birth sex—as when, for example, an individual has the experience
of having been born in the wrong body. For Stoller, these individuals’ biological sex did not coincide with
their gender. Stoller defined sex in terms of anatomy and physiology and gender as psychological phenomena
involving behavior, feelings, thoughts, and fantasies. For Stoller, neither sex nor gender always implies the
other: “while sex and gender seem to common sense inextricably bound together . . . the two realms (sex and
gender) are not inevitably bound in anything like a one-to-one relationship, but each may go into quite inde-
pendent ways” (Stoller 1968, viii–ix). By introducing a distinction between sex and gender, sex researchers of
the 1950s and 1960s accounted for the noncoincidence of bodies and meanings.
7. vii
Introduction
U.S.-American feminists adopted the terminology of sex and gender in the late 1960s to early 1970s, with
other Anglophone countries, and eventually parts of Northern Europe, following suit. The foundations of the
feminist adoption of the distinction were laid at the start of the 20th century by germinal thinkers like Simone
de Beauvoir and Margaret Mead. Simone de Beauvoir’s famous claim in The Second Sex ([1949] 2011) that
“[o]ne is not born, but rather becomes, woman” (283) and Margaret Mead’s anthropological analysis of shift-
ing “sex roles” across cultures in Sex and Temperament: In Three Primitive Societies ([1935] 2001) laid the
groundwork for an understanding of women’s social reality and lived experience as distinct from biological
determinism (belief that human behavior is determined by genes or some part of a human’s physiology). In
the 1970s and early 1980s, U.S.-American feminist theorists were thus able to combine an already established
feminist challenge to biological essentialism with 1950s and 1960s sex research. The distinction provided an
innovative explanatory tool for feminist analysis. Its power lay in its ability to resist and challenge the natu-
ralistic adage “biology is destiny.” Differences could no longer be legitimated by reference to nature. Rather,
differences could be analyzed in terms of their construction by social and historical forces (e.g., familial,
moral, cultural, and political). The position that maintains the irreducibility of history, society, and culture
to given, natural essences has come to be called, in contrast to biological essentialism, social constructivism.
Social constructivism is the theory that knowledge and ideas, like gender and sexuality, are the consequence
of sociohistorical ideas and practices. For proponents of the sex–gender distinction, gender is not the causal
effect of sex but the consequence of social, historical, and cultural ideas and practices.
Many feminists rejected the sex–gender distinction from the start, finding its strict categories to further
naturalize sex and heterosexuality. The problem with the sex– gender distinction was that it did not admit of
the way in which sex itself is mediated. Studies of scientific and medical sex research and practices demon-
strate significant biases in the determination of what counts as “normal,” “abnormal,” and “deviant.” Rather
than admit of ambiguity and variability in bodies and desires, scientists and medical professionals have gone
to great lengths to confirm biological assumptions, from the collection and interpretation of data to electro-
shock therapy and the surgical restructuring of bodies deemed “abnormal” (Fausto-Sterling 2000). Over the
past few decades, researchers, theorists, and activists have significantly challenged exclusionary classification
schemes, securing rights of self-determination and the recognition of human variability. Bodies and desires
simply do not fall into neat, classifiable shapes like the models proposed by sexual dimorphism (distinct dif-
ference in size and appearance of animals of different sexes, as well as in the appearance of sexual organs)
and heterosexuality (Butler 1993; Fausto-Sterling 1985; Vance 1989;). In opposition to those who reduce sex
and sexuality to purely physiological realities – whether through anatomy, hormones, chromosomes, genes,
and/or the brain—others have called for new models capable of addressing the complexity of sex, gender, and
sexuality (Butler 1993; Fausto-Sterling 2000; Grosz 1994; Vance 1989).
Historically, biological conceptions of sex, gender, and sexuality have been indelibly tied to European intel-
lectual traditions, the modern biological concept of race, and the history of colonialism. In the U.S.-American
context, English, French, and Spanish colonizers brought strict beliefs about gender and (hetero)sexual roles
to the “new” world. English Puritans, for example, privileged marital, monogamous, reproductive sexuality as
the only religiously sanctioned law of nature, with all other forms deemed sacrilegious. Sex outside of mar-
riage was not simply frowned upon but criminalized, with women primarily carrying the burden of the pun-
ishment in the form of public humiliation. The colonists’ imported values and means of regulating sexuality
were essential to their primary goal of resettling in the colonies by re-establishing their vision of familial and
communal life (D’Emilio and Freedman 1988, 6). The establishment of communities based on European val-
ues, however, had first to contend with very different concepts of gender and sexuality in native lands. Sexual
practices among Native Americans varied widely, and Native tribes across North America demonstrated differ-
ent sexual cultures and customs that departed from European expectations. In general, most indigenous tribes
accepted sexual experimentation, polygamy, premarital and extramarital sex, and same-sex sexual relations.
Further, men who dressed as women and (albeit rarer) women who dressed as men—Two-Spirit persons—
were highly esteemed in some tribes. Sexuality was not understood in the moral terms of sin, shame, or guilt,
and gender did not necessarily determine one’s social role or status within Native American societies. One of
the only forbidden sexual acts among Native American tribes, for example, was rape, which very rarely ever
occurred before colonization (D’Emilio and Freedman 1988, 7). Despite the varying conceptions of gender
and sexuality across North America, all Native Americans were condemned by Europeans for sexualities
8. viii Introduction
deemed “savage” and “primitive,” as opposed to what the Europeans deemed their own “superior” and
“civilized” sexual customs.
European responses to alternative forms of gender and sexuality exemplified larger scientific and political
discussions concerning race, history, and progress—discussions that justified patriarchal power, the forceful
removal of Native Americans from their lands, U.S.-American slave markets, and the rape of women of color.
Historical European conceptions of sexual difference were part of the intellectual framework within which the
concept of racial difference emerged. European intellectual history reaching back to the ancient Greeks had
long distinguished men and women on the basis of moral and cognitive differences, and people of color were
often described as feminine or in feminine terms (e.g., more bodily, closer to nature, emotional, and irrational).
Moreover, white women came to be described in terms of their “purity” and “civility” in contrast to women
of color, especially black women, who were described as “animalistic” and “primitive.” If racial codes were
sexualized in the sense that racial difference was constructed on the basis of misogynistic assumptions, sexual
codes were also racialized in the sense that sexualities were interpreted and regulated on the basis of racial-
ized assumptions. Native and African Americans were cast as sexually degenerate “savages” who needed to
be “civilized.” Racialized violence, from slavery to rape and lynching, played on white anxieties over black
sexualities. Antimiscegenation laws criminalized interracial marriage, and the one-drop rule meant that chil-
dren born of mixed race were classified as nonwhite, thereby maintaining racial “purity.”
Women of color have been at the forefront of investigating how sex, gender, and sexuality are influenced by
multiple, interlocking systems of meaning. In response to claims by white feminists in the 1970s that women
essentially shared an experience of patriarchal oppression, black feminists insisted on the differentiating role
of race. The term most theorists use today to signal the ways in which seemingly distinct forms of domina-
tion, like sexism and racism, are co-constitutive is intersectionality, a term coined in 1989 by legal theorist
Kimberlé Crenshaw in an essay entitled “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex.” In examining
legal cases concerning racial and sexual discrimination, Crenshaw found that the oppression of black women
lacked legal visibility. One case, in particular, was significant. Owing to discriminatory hiring practices, a cer-
tain company hired white men first, then white women, then black men, and finally black women. When faced
with necessary budget cuts, a large portion of black women were fired on the grounds that they had the least
seniority. The case went to court, and the judge declared that he could not rule in favor of the women because
(1) they were not discriminated against on the basis of sex because no white women were fired; and (2) they
were not discriminated against on the basis of race because no black men were fired. The particular situation
these women faced was invisible to the law. Crenshaw developed the concept of intersectionality to address the
ways in which different forms of discrimination intersect and reinforce one another and to show how general
universals like gender and race are abstract and insufficient. That is to say, so long as gender and race and other
identity markers are abstracted from the rich, complex, and concrete social and historical context in which
they are lived, they are fundamentally false and only perpetuate the very structures they pretend to challenge.
As challenges to essentialist understandings of sex and sexuality demonstrate, there is no single story to
tell about the history and reality of love and sex. Sexuality cannot be understood in the absence of dominant
structures of meaning and how they shape sexual lives. Comparative analyses of different cultures, histories,
and social and historical groups demonstrate the importance of cultural, social, and political factors on indi-
vidual experience and our understanding of sexuality. Love’s lack of any “proper” or “peculiar” expression,
in the words of Darwin, demonstrates the peculiarities of each sexual life, of each touch—desired, refused,
imagined, or fulfilled. Love and Sex: A Primer introduces students to some of the key moments, issues, and
concepts influencing the way we think about love and sex today—from science and technology to reproduc-
tion, family, public health, sexual violence, and sex work.
References
Butler, Judith. 1993. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. New York: Routledge.
Crenshaw, Kimberlé. 1989. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidis-
crimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.” University of Chicago Legal Forum, Issue 1, Art. 8:
139-67.
Darwin, Charles. 2013 (1859). On the Origin of Species. Urbana, IL: Project Gutenberg.
9. ix
Introduction
———. 2018 (1871). The Descent of Man, or Selection in Relation to Sex. Urbana, IL: Project Gutenberg.
———. 2019 (1872). The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. Urbana, IL: Project Gutenberg.
De Beauvoir, Simone. 2011 (1949). The Second Sex. Translated by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier.
New York: Vintage Press.
D’Emilio, John, and Estelle B. Freedman. 1988. Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America. Chicago, IL: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press.
Fausto-Sterling, Anne. 1985. Myths of Gender: Biological Theories about Men and Women. New York: Basic Books.
———. 2000. Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality. New York: Basic Books.
Grosz, Elizabeth. 1994. Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Mead, Margaret. 2001 (1935). Sex and Temperament: In Three Primitive Societies. New York: Harper Perennial.
Plante, Rebecca. 2006. Sexualities in Context: A Social Perspective. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Stoller, Robert. 1968. Sex and Gender: On the Development of Masculinity and Femininity. New York: Science House.
Vance, Carole S. 1989. “Social Construction Theory: Problems in the History of Sexuality.” In Homosexuality, Which
Homosexuality?, edited by A. Van Kooten Nierkerk and T. Van Der Meer, 13-34. Amsterdam, the Netherlands: An
Dekker.
10.
11. 1
Eros is an issue of boundaries. He exists because certain boundaries do. In the interval between reach and
grasp, between glance and counterglance, between ‘I love you’ and ‘I love you too,’ the absent presence of desire
comes alive. But the boundaries of time and glance and I love you are only aftershocks of the main, inevitable
boundary that creates Eros: the boundary of flesh and self between you and me. And it is only, suddenly, at
the moment when I would dissolve that boundary, I realize I never can […] Imagine a city where there is no
desire. Supposing for the moment that the inhabitants of the city continue to eat, drink and procreate in some
mechanical way; still, their life looks flat. They do not theorize or spin tops or speak figuratively. Few think to
shun pain; none give gifts. They bury their dead and forget where… A city without desire is, in sum, a city of no
imagination. Here people think only what they already know.
—Anne Carson (1986)
Love. What a small word we use for an idea so immense and powerful it has altered the flow of history, calmed
monsters, kindled works of art, cheered the forlorn, turned tough guys to mush, consoled the enslaved, driven
strong women mad, glorified the humble, fueled national scandals, bankrupted robber barons, and made
mincemeat of kings. How can love’s spaciousness be conveyed in the narrow confines of one syllable? If we
search for the source of the word, we find a history vague and confusing, stretching back to the Sanskrit lubhyati
(“he desires”). I’m sure the etymology rambles back much farther than that, to a one-syllable word heavy as a
heartbeat. Love is an ancient delirium, a desire older than civilization, with taproots stretching deep into dark
and mysterious days.
—Diane Ackerman (1994)
What the Greeks called Eros, the etymological origin of the English ‘erotic’, was distinguished from other
forms of love—for example, philia for friendship, agape for the general love of others, storge for familial
love—by the madness it causes. Ancient Greek poets like Homer and Sappho described Eros as a loosener
of limbs, akin to sleep and to death. Erotic love, sexual passion, desire effect the undoing of the one beset by
love, as it unravels, melts, fragments the rational mind. Sappho called Eros “irresistible” (fr. 130)—a force
that binds me to it or sweeps me away. The delirium that Eros causes is fueled by lack: I want, and to want
is to lack. Desire is always desire for what I do not have, for what is always in some way absent, distant, just
beyond my grasp. But Eros has no respect for rules, even its own. Unruly Eros thrives on limitations, leading
the Italian courtesan Tulia d’Aragona to theorize “the infinity of love” (D’Aragona 1547).
The desire to understand Eros is just as intangible as erotic desire itself, and the closer one comes to fulfill-
ment, the louder we hear Eros laughing, making the search feel more like a dance or a never-ending game of
hide-and-seek. And yet, we persist, delighting in the quest itself. Philosophers, scientists, poets, kings, judges,
Chapter 1
POWERS OF EROS
12. 2 Love and Sex
religious leaders, parents, and lovers alike have claimed power over the truth of Eros, and all eventually have
been exposed for their arrogance. The latest, scientific understanding of desire has imprisoned Eros in the
confines of pathology. In his groundbreaking genealogy of sexuality, The History of Sexuality (1976, 1984),
Michel Foucault traces the emergence and significance of the modern concept of “sexuality” from the seven-
teenth to the twentieth centuries. The concept of sexuality, he argues, was invented by medical and juridical
discourses of the period, which pathologized and naturalized desire, turning it into something repressed and in
need of liberation. The sexuality we’ve been so desperately seeking to liberate through science is what writers
and film critics might call a “MacGuffin”—a device used solely to move a plot along. For Foucault, the new
concept of sexuality exchanged new mechanisms of social control for older ones, a reality difficult to analyze
when one believes in its “nature.” In sum, Eros is never free of the limits that control and normalize social
realities, and yet Eros is also never really bound to them.
Tales of the power of erotic love are told around the world through fairy tales and folklore from every
known corner of the world, ancient religious texts and artifacts, military histories, the foundation of nations,
quests for power, and revolutions. Entire cultures, societies, movements, ideologies, and sciences have been
launched by its control and toppled by its rebellions. Although few are in agreement over what it is, we are un-
mistakably witness to what it does. Its power is undeniable. Just imagine, as Anne Carson does here epigram,
its absence. In the end, the Greek god himself, which I’ve made ample use of here, must himself be undone,
but we can’t help but bring Eros back again and again in new and creative ways, even if it is just to delight in
what Diane Ackerman calls the great intangible.
The three selections included here introduce readers to the multiple powers of eros. One of the germinal
texts of the study of desire is the ancient Greek Symposium (385 B.C.E.) by Plato, a dialogue that recounts a
dinner party in which the participants take turns delivering speeches in praise of love. The two most famous
speeches, here included, are the speech of Aristophanes, the Greek comedic playwright, and the speech by
Socrates, which recounts his dialogue with Diotima of Mantinea and from which we inherit the notion “Pla-
tonic love.” Plato’s dialogue is followed by Audre Lorde’s much anthologized “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic
as Power,” which reimagines desire as a subversive and creative force that challenges sexist, heterosexist, and
racist oppression. The final piece from Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, and Richard Lannon’s A General Theory
of Love (2000) binds hard science to love’s hope and poeticism. The chapter included here, “Archimedes’
Principle: How We Sense the Inner World of Other Hearts,” draws on recent research into the plasticity of
the brain to examine the way in which emotional connections function and what we need to flourish as emo-
tional beings.
References
Ackerman, Diane. 1994. A Natural History of Love. New York: Random House.
Carson, Anne. 1986. Eros: The Bittersweet. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
D’Aragona, Tulia. 1997 (1547). Dialogue on the Infinity of Love. Translated by Rinaldina Russell and Bruce Merry. Chi-
cago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Foucault, Michel. 1978 (1976), 1985 (1984), 1986 (1984). The History of Sexuality, 3 volumes. Translated by Robert
Hurley. New York: Pantheon Books.
Lewis, Thomas, Ari Amini, and Richard Lannon. 2000. “Archimedes’ Principle: How We Sense the Inner World of Other
Hearts.” In A General Theory of Love, 35-65. New York: Vintage Books.
Lorde, Audre. 1984. “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power.” In Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, 53-59. Berkeley,
CA: Crossing Press.
Plato. 2013 (C. 385 B.C.E.). Symposium. Translated by Benjamin Jowett. Urbana, IL: Project Gutenberg.
13. 3
Symposium—The Speeches of Aristophanes and
Socrates*
Plato
The Speech of Aristophanes
[J]udging by their neglect of him, [men] have never, as I think, at all understood the power of Love. For if they
had understood him they would surely have built noble temples and altars, and offered solemn sacrifices in his
honor; but this is not done, and most certainly ought to be done: since of all the gods he is the best friend of
men, the helper and the healer of the ills which are the great impediment to the happiness of the race. I will try
to describe his power to you, and you shall teach the rest of the world what I am teaching you.
In the first place, let me treat of the nature of man and what has happened to it; for the original human
nature was not like the present, but different. The sexes were not two as they are now, but originally three in
number; there was man, woman, and the union of the two, having a name corresponding to this double nature,
which had once a real existence, but is now lost, and the word ‘Androgynous’ is only preserved as a term of
reproach. In the second place, the primeval man was round, his back and sides forming a circle; and he had
four hands and four feet, one head with two faces, looking opposite ways, set on a round neck and precisely
alike; also four ears, two privy members, and the remainder to correspond. He could walk upright as men
now do, backwards or forwards as he pleased, and he could also roll over and over at a great pace, turning on
his four hands and four feet, eight in all, like tumblers going over and over with their legs in the air; this was
when he wanted to run fast. Now the sexes were three, and such as I have described them; because the sun,
moon, and earth are three; and the man was originally the child of the sun, the woman of the earth, and the
man-woman of the moon, which is made up of sun and earth, and they were all round and moved round and
round like their parents.
Terrible was their might and strength, and the thoughts of their hearts were great, and they made an attack
upon the gods; of them is told the tale of Otys and Ephialtes who, as Homer says, dared to scale heaven, and
would have laid hands upon the gods. Doubt reigned in the celestial councils. Should they kill them and an-
nihilate the race with thunderbolts, as they had done the giants, then there would be an end of the sacrifices
and worship which men offered to them; but, on the other hand, the gods could not suffer their insolence to be
unrestrained. At last, after a good deal of reflection, Zeus discovered a way.
He said: ‘Methinks I have a plan which will humble their pride and improve their manners; men shall con-
tinue to exist, but I will cut them in two and then they will be diminished in strength and increased in numbers;
this will have the advantage of making them more profitable to us. They shall walk upright on two legs, and if
they continue insolent and will not be quiet, I will split them again and they shall hop about on a single leg.’
He spoke and cut men in two, like a sorb-apple which is halved for pickling, or as you might divide an
egg with a hair; and as he cut them one after another, he bade Apollo give the face and the half of the neck a
turn in order that the man might contemplate the section of himself: he would thus learn a lesson of humility.
Apollo was also bidden to heal their wounds and compose their forms. So he gave a turn to the face and pulled
the skin from the sides all over that which in our language is called the belly, like the purses which draw in,
and he made one mouth at the centre, which he fastened in a knot (the same which is called the navel); he also
moulded the breast and took out most of the wrinkles, much as a shoemaker might smooth leather upon a last;
he left a few, however, in the region of the belly and navel, as a memorial of the primeval state.
After the division the two parts of man, each desiring his other half, came together, and throwing their
arms about one another, entwined in mutual embraces, longing to grow into one, they were on the point of dy-
ing from hunger and self-neglect, because they did not like to do anything apart; and when one of the halves
died and the other survived, the survivor sought another mate, man or woman as we call them—being the sec-
tions of entire men or women—and clung to that.
From Plato. 2013 (c. 385 B.C.E.). Symposium. Translated by Benjamin Jowett. Urbana, IL: Project Gutenberg.
14. 4 Love and Sex
They were being destroyed, when Zeus in pity of them invented a new plan: he turned the parts of genera-
tion round to the front, for this had not been always their position, and they sowed the seed no longer as hith-
erto like grasshoppers in the ground, but in one another; and after the transposition the male generated in the
female in order that by the mutual embraces of man and woman they might breed, and the race might continue;
or if man came to man they might be satisfied, and rest, and go their ways to the business of life: so ancient is
the desire of one another which is implanted in us, reuniting our original nature, making one of two, and heal-
ing the state of man. Each of us when separated, having one side only, like a flat fish, is but the indenture of a
man, and he is always looking for his other half.
Men who are a section of that double nature which was once called Androgynous are lovers of women:
adulterers are generally of this breed, and also adulterous women who lust after men; the women who are a
section of the woman do not care for men, but have female attachments; the female companions are of this sort.
But they who are a section of the male follow the male, and while they are young, being slices of the origi-
nal man, they hang about men and embrace them, and they are themselves the best of boys and youths, because
they have the most manly nature. Some indeed assert that they are shameless, but this is not true; for they do
not act thus from any want of shame, but because they are valiant and manly, and have a manly countenance,
and they embrace that which is like them. And these when they grow up become our statesmen, and these only,
which is a great proof of the truth of what I am saying. When they reach manhood they are lovers of youth,
and are not naturally inclined to marry or beget children—if at all, they do so only in obedience to the law; but
they are satisfied if they may be allowed to live with one another unwedded; and such a nature is prone to love
and ready to return love, always embracing that which is akin to him.
And when one of them meets with his other half, the actual half of himself, whether he be a lover of youth
or a lover of another sort, the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy, and one will
not be out of the other’s sight, as I may say, even for a moment: these are the people who pass their whole lives
together; yet they could not explain what they desire of one another. For the intense yearning which each of
them has towards the other does not appear to be the desire of lover’s intercourse, but of something else which
the soul of either evidently desires and cannot tell, and of which she has only a dark and doubtful presentiment.
Suppose Hephaestus, with his instruments, to come to the pair who are lying side by side and to say to
them, ‘What do you people want of one another?’ they would be unable to explain. And suppose further, that
when he saw their perplexity he said: ‘Do you desire to be wholly one; always day and night to be in one an-
other’s company? for if this is what you desire, I am ready to melt you into one and let you grow together, so
that being two you shall become one, and while you live a common life as if you were a single man, and after
your death in the world below still be one departed soul instead of two—I ask whether this is what you lov-
ingly desire, and whether you are satisfied to attain this?’—there is not a man of them who when he heard the
proposal would deny or would not acknowledge that this meeting and melting into one another, this becoming
one instead of two, was the very expression of his ancient need (compare Arist. Pol.). And the reason is that
human nature was originally one and we were a whole, and the desire and pursuit of the whole is called love.
There was a time, I say, when we were one, but now because of the wickedness of mankind God has dis-
persed us, as the Arcadians were dispersed into villages by the Lacedaemonians (compare Arist. Pol.). And if
we are not obedient to the gods, there is a danger that we shall be split up again and go about in basso-relievo,
like the profile figures having only half a nose which are sculptured on monuments, and that we shall be like
tallies. Wherefore let us exhort all men to piety, that we may avoid evil, and obtain the good, of which Love
is to us the lord and minister; and let no one oppose him—he is the enemy of the gods who opposes him. For
if we are friends of the God and at peace with him we shall find our own true loves, which rarely happens in
this world at present.
I am serious, and therefore I must beg Eryximachus not to make fun or to find any allusion in what I am
saying to Pausanias andAgathon, who, as I suspect, are both of the manly nature, and belong to the class which
I have been describing.
But my words have a wider application—they include men and women everywhere; and I believe that if
our loves were perfectly accomplished, and each one returning to his primeval nature had his original true love,
then our race would be happy. And if this would be best of all, the best in the next degree and under present
circumstances must be the nearest approach to such an union; and that will be the attainment of a congenial
love. Wherefore, if we would praise him who has given to us the benefit, we must praise the god Love, who
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Chapter 1 POWERS OF EROS
is our greatest benefactor, both leading us in this life back to our own nature, and giving us high hopes for the
future, for he promises that if we are pious, he will restore us to our original state, and heal us and make us
happy and blessed.
The Speech of Socrates
Why, my dear friend, said Socrates, must not I or any one be in a strait who has to speak after he has heard such
a rich and varied discourse? I am especially struck with the beauty of the concluding words [of Agathon]—
who could listen to them without amazement? When I reflected on the immeasurable inferiority of my own
powers, I was ready to run away for shame, if there had been a possibility of escape. For I was reminded of
Gorgias, and at the end of his speech I fancied that Agathon was shaking at me the Gorginian or Gorgonian
head of the great master of rhetoric, which was simply to turn me and my speech into stone, as Homer says
(Odyssey), and strike me dumb.
And then I perceived how foolish I had been in consenting to take my turn with you in praising love, and
saying that I too was a master of the art, when I really had no conception how anything ought to be praised.
For in my simplicity I imagined that the topics of praise should be true, and that this being presupposed, out of
the true the speaker was to choose the best and set them forth in the best manner. And I felt quite proud, think-
ing that I knew the nature of true praise, and should speak well. Whereas I now see that the intention was to
attribute to Love every species of greatness and glory, whether really belonging to him or not, without regard
to truth or falsehood—that was no matter; for the original proposal seems to have been not that each of you
should really praise Love, but only that you should appear to praise him. And so you attribute to Love every
imaginable form of praise which can be gathered anywhere; and you say that ‘he is all this,’ and ‘the cause of
all that,’ making him appear the fairest and best of all to those who know him not, for you cannot impose upon
those who know him. And a noble and solemn hymn of praise have you rehearsed.
But as I misunderstood the nature of the praise when I said that I would take my turn, I must beg to be ab-
solved from the promise which I made in ignorance, and which (as Euripides would say (Eurip. Hyppolytus))
was a promise of the lips and not of the mind. Farewell then to such a strain: for I do not praise in that way; no,
indeed, I cannot. But if you like to hear the truth about love, I am ready to speak in my own manner, though I
will not make myself ridiculous by entering into any rivalry with you. Say then, Phaedrus, whether you would
like to have the truth about love, spoken in any words and in any order which may happen to come into my
mind at the time. Will that be agreeable to you?
[Phaedrus and the company bid him speak in any manner which he thought best.]
Then… let me have your permission first to ask Agathon a few more questions, in order that I may take his
admissions as the premises of my discourse.
I grant the permission, said Phaedrus: put your questions. [Socrates then proceeded.]
In the magnificent oration which you have just uttered, I think that you were right, my dear Agathon, in
proposing to speak of the nature of Love first and afterwards of his works—that is a way of beginning which I
very much approve. And as you have spoken so eloquently of his nature, may I ask you further, Whether love
is the love of something or of nothing? And here I must explain myself: I do not want you to say that love is
the love of a father or the love of a mother—that would be ridiculous; but to answer as you would, if I asked
is a father a father of something? to which you would find no difficulty in replying, of a son or daughter: and
the answer would be right.
Very true, said Agathon.
And you would say the same of a mother?
He assented.
Yet let me ask you one more question in order to illustrate my meaning: Is not a brother to be regarded
essentially as a brother of something?
Certainly, he replied.
That is, of a brother or sister?
Yes, he said.
And now, said Socrates, I will ask about Love: Is Love of something or of nothing?
16. 6 Love and Sex
Of something, surely, he replied.
Keep in mind what this is, and tell me what I want to know—whether Love desires that of which love is.
Yes, surely.
And does he possess, or does he not possess, that which he loves and desires?
Probably not, I should say.
Nay, replied Socrates, I would have you consider whether ‘necessarily’ is not rather the word. The infer-
ence that he who desires something is in want of something, and that he who desires nothing is in want of
nothing, is in my judgment, Agathon, absolutely and necessarily true. What do you think?
I agree with you, said Agathon.
Very good. Would he who is great, desire to be great, or he who is strong, desire to be strong?
That would be inconsistent with our previous admissions.
True. For he who is anything cannot want to be that which he is?
Very true.
And yet, added Socrates, if a man being strong desired to be strong, or being swift desired to be swift,
or being healthy desired to be healthy, in that case he might be thought to desire something which he already
has or is. I give the example in order that we may avoid misconception. For the possessors of these qualities,
Agathon, must be supposed to have their respective advantages at the time, whether they choose or not; and
who can desire that which he has? Therefore, when a person says, I am well and wish to be well, or I am rich
and wish to be rich, and I desire simply to have what I have—to him we shall reply: ‘You, my friend, having
wealth and health and strength, want to have the continuance of them; for at this moment, whether you choose
or no, you have them. And when you say, I desire that which I have and nothing else, is not your meaning that
you want to have what you now have in the future?’ He must agree with us—must he not?
He must, replied Agathon.
Then, said Socrates, he desires that what he has at present may be preserved to him in the future, which is
equivalent to saying that he desires something which is non-existent to him, and which as yet he has not got:
Very true, he said.
Then he and every one who desires, desires that which he has not already, and which is future and not
present, and which he has not, and is not, and of which he is in want; these are the sort of things which love
and desire seek?
Very true, he said.
Then now, said Socrates, let us recapitulate the argument. First, is not love of something, and of something
too which is wanting to a man?
Yes, he replied.
Remember further what you said in your speech, or if you do not remember I will remind you: you said
that the love of the beautiful set in order the empire of the gods, for that of deformed things there is no love—
did you not say something of that kind?
Yes, said Agathon.
Yes, my friend, and the remark was a just one. And if this is true, Love is the love of beauty and not of
deformity?
He assented.
And the admission has been already made that Love is of something which a man wants and has not?
True, he said.
Then Love wants and has not beauty?
Certainly, he replied.
And would you call that beautiful which wants and does not possess beauty?
Certainly not.
Then would you still say that love is beautiful?
Agathon replied: I fear that I did not understand what I was saying.
You made a very good speech, Agathon, replied Socrates; but there is yet one small question which I
would fain ask: Is not the good also the beautiful?
Yes.
Then in wanting the beautiful, love wants also the good?
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Chapter 1 POWERS OF EROS
I cannot refute you, Socrates, said Agathon: Let us assume that what you say is true.
Say rather, beloved Agathon, that you cannot refute the truth; for Socrates is easily refuted.
And now, taking my leave of you, I would rehearse a tale of love which I heard from Diotima of Mantineia
(compare 1 Alcibiades), a woman wise in this and in many other kinds of knowledge, who in the days of old,
when the Athenians offered sacrifice before the coming of the plague, delayed the disease ten years. She was
my instructress in the art of love, and I shall repeat to you what she said to me, beginning with the admissions
made by Agathon, which are nearly if not quite the same which I made to the wise woman when she ques-
tioned me: I think that this will be the easiest way, and I shall take both parts myself as well as I can (compare
Gorgias). As you, Agathon, suggested (supra), I must speak first of the being and nature of Love, and then of
his works. First I said to her in nearly the same words which he used to me, that Love was a mighty god, and
likewise fair; and she proved to me as I proved to him that, by my own showing, Love was neither fair nor
good. ‘What do you mean, Diotima,’ I said, ‘is love then evil and foul?’ ‘Hush,’ she cried; ‘must that be foul
which is not fair?’ ‘Certainly,’ I said. ‘And is that which is not wise, ignorant? do you not see that there is a
mean between wisdom and ignorance?’ ‘And what may that be?’ I said. ‘Right opinion,’ she replied; ‘which,
as you know, being incapable of giving a reason, is not knowledge (for how can knowledge be devoid of rea-
son? nor again, ignorance, for neither can ignorance attain the truth), but is clearly something which is a mean
between ignorance and wisdom.’ ‘Quite true,’ I replied. ‘Do not then insist,’ she said, ‘that what is not fair is of
necessity foul, or what is not good evil; or infer that because love is not fair and good he is therefore foul and
evil; for he is in a mean between them.’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘Love is surely admitted by all to be a great god.’ ‘By
those who know or by those who do not know?’ ‘By all.’ ‘And how, Socrates,’ she said with a smile, ‘can Love
be acknowledged to be a great god by those who say that he is not a god at all?’ ‘And who are they?’ I said.
‘You and I are two of them,’ she replied. ‘How can that be?’ I said. ‘It is quite intelligible,’ she replied; ‘for you
yourself would acknowledge that the gods are happy and fair—of course you would—would you dare to say
that any god was not?’ ‘Certainly not,’ I replied. ‘And you mean by the happy, those who are the possessors
of things good or fair?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘And you admitted that Love, because he was in want, desires those good and
fair things of which he is in want?’ ‘Yes, I did.’ ‘But how can he be a god who has no portion in what is either
good or fair?’ ‘Impossible.’ ‘Then you see that you also deny the divinity of Love.’
‘What then is Love?’ I asked; ‘Is he mortal?’ ‘No.’ ‘What then?’ ‘As in the former instance, he is neither
mortal nor immortal, but in a mean between the two.’ ‘What is he, Diotima?’ ‘He is a great spirit (daimon),
and like all spirits he is intermediate between the divine and the mortal.’ ‘And what,’ I said, ‘is his power?’
‘He interprets,’ she replied, ‘between gods and men, conveying and taking across to the gods the prayers and
sacrifices of men, and to men the commands and replies of the gods; he is the mediator who spans the chasm
which divides them, and therefore in him all is bound together, and through him the arts of the prophet and
the priest, their sacrifices and mysteries and charms, and all prophecy and incantation, find their way. For God
mingles not with man; but through Love all the intercourse and converse of God with man, whether awake
or asleep, is carried on. The wisdom which understands this is spiritual; all other wisdom, such as that of arts
and handicrafts, is mean and vulgar. Now these spirits or intermediate powers are many and diverse, and one
of them is Love.’ ‘And who,’ I said, ‘was his father, and who his mother?’ ‘The tale,’ she said, ‘will take time;
nevertheless I will tell you. On the birthday of Aphrodite there was a feast of the gods, at which the god Poros
or Plenty, who is the son of Metis or Discretion, was one of the guests. When the feast was over, Penia or
Poverty, as the manner is on such occasions, came about the doors to beg. Now Plenty who was the worse for
nectar (there was no wine in those days), went into the garden of Zeus and fell into a heavy sleep, and Poverty
considering her own straitened circumstances, plotted to have a child by him, and accordingly she lay down
at his side and conceived Love, who partly because he is naturally a lover of the beautiful, and because Aph-
rodite is herself beautiful, and also because he was born on her birthday, is her follower and attendant. And as
his parentage is, so also are his fortunes. In the first place he is always poor, and anything but tender and fair,
as the many imagine him; and he is rough and squalid, and has no shoes, nor a house to dwell in; on the bare
earth exposed he lies under the open heaven, in the streets, or at the doors of houses, taking his rest; and like
his mother he is always in distress. Like his father too, whom he also partly resembles, he is always plotting
against the fair and good; he is bold, enterprising, strong, a mighty hunter, always weaving some intrigue or
other, keen in the pursuit of wisdom, fertile in resources; a philosopher at all times, terrible as an enchanter,
sorcerer, sophist. He is by nature neither mortal nor immortal, but alive and flourishing at one moment when
18. 8 Love and Sex
he is in plenty, and dead at another moment, and again alive by reason of his father’s nature. But that which is
always flowing in is always flowing out, and so he is never in want and never in wealth; and, further, he is in
a mean between ignorance and knowledge. The truth of the matter is this: No god is a philosopher or seeker
after wisdom, for he is wise already; nor does any man who is wise seek after wisdom. Neither do the ignorant
seek after wisdom. For herein is the evil of ignorance, that he who is neither good nor wise is nevertheless
satisfied with himself: he has no desire for that of which he feels no want.’ ‘But who then, Diotima,’ I said,
‘are the lovers of wisdom, if they are neither the wise nor the foolish?’ ‘A child may answer that question,’ she
replied; ‘they are those who are in a mean between the two; Love is one of them. For wisdom is a most beauti-
ful thing, and Love is of the beautiful; and therefore Love is also a philosopher or lover of wisdom, and being
a lover of wisdom is in a mean between the wise and the ignorant. And of this too his birth is the cause; for his
father is wealthy and wise, and his mother poor and foolish. Such, my dear Socrates, is the nature of the spirit
Love. The error in your conception of him was very natural, and as I imagine from what you say, has arisen
out of a confusion of love and the beloved, which made you think that love was all beautiful. For the beloved
is the truly beautiful, and delicate, and perfect, and blessed; but the principle of love is of another nature, and
is such as I have described.’
I said, ‘O thou stranger woman, thou sayest well; but, assuming Love to be such as you say, what is the
use of him to men?’ ‘That, Socrates,’ she replied, ‘I will attempt to unfold: of his nature and birth I have al-
ready spoken; and you acknowledge that love is of the beautiful. But some one will say: Of the beautiful in
what, Socrates and Diotima?—or rather let me put the question more clearly, and ask: When a man loves the
beautiful, what does he desire?’ I answered her ‘That the beautiful may be his.’ ‘Still,’ she said, ‘the answer
suggests a further question: What is given by the possession of beauty?’ ‘To what you have asked,’ I replied, ‘I
have no answer ready.’ ‘Then,’ she said, ‘let me put the word “good” in the place of the beautiful, and repeat
the question once more: If he who loves loves the good, what is it then that he loves?’ ‘The possession of the
good,’ I said. ‘And what does he gain who possesses the good?’ ‘Happiness,’ I replied; ‘there is less difficulty
in answering that question.’ ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘the happy are made happy by the acquisition of good things.
Nor is there any need to ask why a man desires happiness; the answer is already final.’ ‘You are right.’ I said.
‘And is this wish and this desire common to all? and do all men always desire their own good, or only some
men?—what say you?’ ‘All men,’ I replied; ‘the desire is common to all.’ ‘Why, then,’ she rejoined, ‘are not
all men, Socrates, said to love, but only some of them? whereas you say that all men are always loving the
same things.’ ‘I myself wonder,’ I said, ‘why this is.’ ‘There is nothing to wonder at,’ she replied; ‘the reason is
that one part of love is separated off and receives the name of the whole, but the other parts have other names.’
‘Give an illustration,’ I said. She answered me as follows: ‘There is poetry, which, as you know, is complex
and manifold. All creation or passage of non-being into being is poetry or making, and the processes of all art
are creative; and the masters of arts are all poets or makers.’ ‘Very true.’ ‘Still,’ she said, ‘you know that they
are not called poets, but have other names; only that portion of the art which is separated off from the rest, and
is concerned with music and metre, is termed poetry, and they who possess poetry in this sense of the word
are called poets.’ ‘Very true,’ I said. ‘And the same holds of love. For you may say generally that all desire of
good and happiness is only the great and subtle power of love; but they who are drawn towards him by any
other path, whether the path of money-making or gymnastics or philosophy, are not called lovers—the name
of the whole is appropriated to those whose affection takes one form only—they alone are said to love, or to
be lovers.’ ‘I dare say,’ I replied, ‘that you are right.’ ‘Yes,’ she added, ‘and you hear people say that lovers
are seeking for their other half; but I say that they are seeking neither for the half of themselves, nor for the
whole, unless the half or the whole be also a good. And they will cut off their own hands and feet and cast
them away, if they are evil; for they love not what is their own, unless perchance there be some one who calls
what belongs to him the good, and what belongs to another the evil. For there is nothing which men love but
the good. Is there anything?’ ‘Certainly, I should say, that there is nothing.’ ‘Then,’ she said, ‘the simple truth
is, that men love the good.’ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘To which must be added that they love the possession of the good?’
‘Yes, that must be added.’ ‘And not only the possession, but the everlasting possession of the good?’ ‘That
must be added too.’ ‘Then love,’ she said, ‘may be described generally as the love of the everlasting possession
of the good?’ ‘That is most true.’
‘Then if this be the nature of love, can you tell me further,’ she said, ‘what is the manner of the pursuit?
what are they doing who show all this eagerness and heat which is called love? and what is the object which
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Chapter 1 POWERS OF EROS
they have in view? Answer me.’ ‘Nay, Diotima,’ I replied, ‘if I had known, I should not have wondered at your
wisdom, neither should I have come to learn from you about this very matter.’ ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I will teach
you: The object which they have in view is birth in beauty, whether of body or soul.’ ‘I do not understand you,’
I said; ‘the oracle requires an explanation.’ ‘I will make my meaning clearer,’ she replied. ‘I mean to say, that
all men are bringing to the birth in their bodies and in their souls. There is a certain age at which human nature
is desirous of procreation—procreation which must be in beauty and not in deformity; and this procreation is
the union of man and woman, and is a divine thing; for conception and generation are an immortal principle in
the mortal creature, and in the inharmonious they can never be. But the deformed is always inharmonious with
the divine, and the beautiful harmonious. Beauty, then, is the destiny or goddess of parturition who presides at
birth, and therefore, when approaching beauty, the conceiving power is propitious, and diffusive, and benign,
and begets and bears fruit: at the sight of ugliness she frowns and contracts and has a sense of pain, and turns
away, and shrivels up, and not without a pang refrains from conception. And this is the reason why, when
the hour of conception arrives, and the teeming nature is full, there is such a flutter and ecstasy about beauty
whose approach is the alleviation of the pain of travail. For love, Socrates, is not, as you imagine, the love of
the beautiful only.’ ‘What then?’ ‘The love of generation and of birth in beauty.’ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, indeed,’
she replied. ‘But why of generation?’ ‘Because to the mortal creature, generation is a sort of eternity and im-
mortality,’ she replied; ‘and if, as has been already admitted, love is of the everlasting possession of the good,
all men will necessarily desire immortality together with good: Wherefore love is of immortality.’
All this she taught me at various times when she spoke of love. And I remember her once saying to me,
‘What is the cause, Socrates, of love, and the attendant desire? See you not how all animals, birds, as well as
beasts, in their desire of procreation, are in agony when they take the infection of love, which begins with the
desire of union; whereto is added the care of offspring, on whose behalf the weakest are ready to battle against
the strongest even to the uttermost, and to die for them, and will let themselves be tormented with hunger
or suffer anything in order to maintain their young. Man may be supposed to act thus from reason; but why
should animals have these passionate feelings? Can you tell me why?’ Again I replied that I did not know.
She said to me: ‘And do you expect ever to become a master in the art of love, if you do not know this?’ ‘But
I have told you already, Diotima, that my ignorance is the reason why I come to you; for I am conscious that
I want a teacher; tell me then the cause of this and of the other mysteries of love.’ ‘Marvel not,’ she said, ‘if
you believe that love is of the immortal, as we have several times acknowledged; for here again, and on the
same principle too, the mortal nature is seeking as far as is possible to be everlasting and immortal: and this is
only to be attained by generation, because generation always leaves behind a new existence in the place of the
old. Nay even in the life of the same individual there is succession and not absolute unity: a man is called the
same, and yet in the short interval which elapses between youth and age, and in which every animal is said to
have life and identity, he is undergoing a perpetual process of loss and reparation—hair, flesh, bones, blood,
and the whole body are always changing. Which is true not only of the body, but also of the soul, whose hab-
its, tempers, opinions, desires, pleasures, pains, fears, never remain the same in any one of us, but are always
coming and going; and equally true of knowledge, and what is still more surprising to us mortals, not only do
the sciences in general spring up and decay, so that in respect of them we are never the same; but each of them
individually experiences a like change. For what is implied in the word “recollection,” but the departure of
knowledge, which is ever being forgotten, and is renewed and preserved by recollection, and appears to be the
same although in reality new, according to that law of succession by which all mortal things are preserved, not
absolutely the same, but by substitution, the old worn-out mortality leaving another new and similar existence
behind—unlike the divine, which is always the same and not another? And in this way, Socrates, the mortal
body, or mortal anything, partakes of immortality; but the immortal in another way. Marvel not then at the
love which all men have of their offspring; for that universal love and interest is for the sake of immortality.’
I was astonished at her words, and said: ‘Is this really true, O thou wise Diotima?’ And she answered with
all the authority of an accomplished sophist: ‘Of that, Socrates, you may be assured; think only of the ambition
of men, and you will wonder at the senselessness of their ways, unless you consider how they are stirred by the
love of an immortality of fame. They are ready to run all risks greater far than they would have run for their
children, and to spend money and undergo any sort of toil, and even to die, for the sake of leaving behind them
a name which shall be eternal. Do you imagine that Alcestis would have died to save Admetus, or Achilles to
avenge Patroclus, or your own Codrus in order to preserve the kingdom for his sons, if they had not imagined
20. 10 Love and Sex
that the memory of their virtues, which still survives among us, would be immortal? Nay,’ she said, ‘I am per-
suaded that all men do all things, and the better they are the more they do them, in hope of the glorious fame
of immortal virtue; for they desire the immortal.
‘Those who are pregnant in the body only, betake themselves to women and beget children—this is the
character of their love; their offspring, as they hope, will preserve their memory and giving them the blessed-
ness and immortality which they desire in the future. But souls which are pregnant—for there certainly are
men who are more creative in their souls than in their bodies—conceive that which is proper for the soul to
conceive or contain. And what are these conceptions?—wisdom and virtue in general. And such creators are
poets and all artists who are deserving of the name inventor. But the greatest and fairest sort of wisdom by far
is that which is concerned with the ordering of states and families, and which is called temperance and justice.
And he who in youth has the seed of these implanted in him and is himself inspired, when he comes to maturity
desires to beget and generate. He wanders about seeking beauty that he may beget offspring—for in deformity
he will beget nothing—and naturally embraces the beautiful rather than the deformed body; above all when
he finds a fair and noble and well-nurtured soul, he embraces the two in one person, and to such an one he is
full of speech about virtue and the nature and pursuits of a good man; and he tries to educate him; and at the
touch of the beautiful which is ever present to his memory, even when absent, he brings forth that which he
had conceived long before, and in company with him tends that which he brings forth; and they are married
by a far nearer tie and have a closer friendship than those who beget mortal children, for the children who are
their common offspring are fairer and more immortal. Who, when he thinks of Homer and Hesiod and other
great poets, would not rather have their children than ordinary human ones? Who would not emulate them in
the creation of children such as theirs, which have preserved their memory and given them everlasting glory?
Or who would not have such children as Lycurgus left behind him to be the saviours, not only of Lacedaemon,
but of Hellas, as one may say? There is Solon, too, who is the revered father of Athenian laws; and many oth-
ers there are in many other places, both among Hellenes and barbarians, who have given to the world many
noble works, and have been the parents of virtue of every kind; and many temples have been raised in their
honour for the sake of children such as theirs; which were never raised in honour of any one, for the sake of
his mortal children.
‘These are the lesser mysteries of love, into which even you, Socrates, may enter; to the greater and more
hidden ones which are the crown of these, and to which, if you pursue them in a right spirit, they will lead, I
know not whether you will be able to attain. But I will do my utmost to inform you, and do you follow if you
can. For he who would proceed aright in this matter should begin in youth to visit beautiful forms; and first, if
he be guided by his instructor aright, to love one such form only—out of that he should create fair thoughts;
and soon he will of himself perceive that the beauty of one form is akin to the beauty of another; and then if
beauty of form in general is his pursuit, how foolish would he be not to recognize that the beauty in every form
is and the same! And when he perceives this he will abate his violent love of the one, which he will despise and
deem a small thing, and will become a lover of all beautiful forms; in the next stage he will consider that the
beauty of the mind is more honourable than the beauty of the outward form. So that if a virtuous soul have but
a little comeliness, he will be content to love and tend him, and will search out and bring to the birth thoughts
which may improve the young, until he is compelled to contemplate and see the beauty of institutions and
laws, and to understand that the beauty of them all is of one family, and that personal beauty is a trifle; and
after laws and institutions he will go on to the sciences, that he may see their beauty, being not like a servant in
love with the beauty of one youth or man or institution, himself a slave mean and narrow-minded, but drawing
towards and contemplating the vast sea of beauty, he will create many fair and noble thoughts and notions in
boundless love of wisdom; until on that shore he grows and waxes strong, and at last the vision is revealed to
him of a single science, which is the science of beauty everywhere. To this I will proceed; please to give me
your very best attention:
‘He who has been instructed thus far in the things of love, and who has learned to see the beautiful in due
order and succession, when he comes toward the end will suddenly perceive a nature of wondrous beauty (and
this, Socrates, is the final cause of all our former toils)—a nature which in the first place is everlasting, not
growing and decaying, or waxing and waning; secondly, not fair in one point of view and foul in another, or at
one time or in one relation or at one place fair, at another time or in another relation or at another place foul, as
if fair to some and foul to others, or in the likeness of a face or hands or any other part of the bodily frame, or in
21. 11
Chapter 1 POWERS OF EROS
any form of speech or knowledge, or existing in any other being, as for example, in an animal, or in heaven, or
in earth, or in any other place; but beauty absolute, separate, simple, and everlasting, which without diminution
and without increase, or any change, is imparted to the ever-growing and perishing beauties of all other things.
He who from these ascending under the influence of true love, begins to perceive that beauty, is not far from
the end. And the true order of going, or being led by another, to the things of love, is to begin from the beauties
of earth and mount upwards for the sake of that other beauty, using these as steps only, and from one going
on to two, and from two to all fair forms, and from fair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair
notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence
of beauty is. This, my dear Socrates,’ said the stranger of Mantineia, ‘is that life above all others which man
should live, in the contemplation of beauty absolute; a beauty which if you once beheld, you would see not
to be after the measure of gold, and garments, and fair boys and youths, whose presence now entrances you;
and you and many a one would be content to live seeing them only and conversing with them without meat or
drink, if that were possible—you only want to look at them and to be with them. But what if man had eyes to
see the true beauty—the divine beauty, I mean, pure and clear and unalloyed, not clogged with the pollutions
of mortality and all the colours and vanities of human life—thither looking, and holding converse with the true
beauty simple and divine? Remember how in that communion only, beholding beauty with the eye of the mind,
he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a
reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal
man may. Would that be an ignoble life?’
Such, Phaedrus—and I speak not only to you, but to all of you—were the words of Diotima; and I am
persuaded of their truth. And being persuaded of them, I try to persuade others, that in the attainment of this
end human nature will not easily find a helper better than love: And therefore, also, I say that every man ought
to honour him as I myself honour him, and walk in his ways, and exhort others to do the same, and praise the
power and spirit of love according to the measure of my ability now and ever.
The words which I have spoken, you, Phaedrus, may call an encomium of love, or anything else which
you please.
Note
*Editor’s note: minor edits (in brackets) and paragraph breaks have been added for readability.
23. 13
Chapter 1 POWERS OF EROS
is felt in our disaffection from so much of what we do. For instance, how often do we truly love our work even
at its most difficult?
The principal horror of any system which defines the good in terms of profit rather than in terms of hu-
man need, or which defines human need to the exclusion of the psychic and emotional components of that
need—the principal horror of such a system is that it robs our work of its erotic value, its erotic power and life
appeal and fulfillment. Such a system reduces work to a travesty of necessities, a duty by which we earn bread
or oblivion for ourselves and those we love. But this is tantamount to blinding a painter and then telling her to
improve her work, and to enjoy the act of painting. It is not only next to impossible, it is also profoundly cruel.
As women, we need to examine the ways in which our world can be truly different. I am speaking here of
the necessity for reassessing the quality of all the aspects of our lives and of our work, and of how we move
toward and through them.
The very word erotic comes from the Greek word eros, the personification of love in all its aspects—born
of Chaos, and personifying creative power and harmony. When I speak of the erotic, then, I speak of it as an
assertion of the lifeforce of women; of that creative energy empowered, the knowledge and use of which we
are now reclaiming in our language, our history, our dancing, our loving, our work, our lives.
There are frequent attempts to equate pornography and eroticism, two diametrically opposed uses of the
sexual. Because of these attempts, it has become fashionable to separate the spiritual (psychic and emotional)
from the political, to see them as contradictory or antithetical. “What do you mean, a poetic revolutionary, a
meditating gunrunner?” In the same way, we have attempted to separate the spiritual and the erotic, thereby re-
ducing the spiritual to a world of flattened affect, a world of the ascetic who aspires to feel nothing. But nothing
is farther from the truth. For the ascetic position is one of the highest fear, the gravest immobility. The severe
abstinence of the ascetic becomes the ruling obsession.And it is one not of self-discipline but of self-abnegation.
The dichotomy between the spiritual and the political is also false, resulting from an incomplete attention
to our erotic knowledge. For the bridge which connects them is formed by the erotic—the sensual—those
physical, emotional, and psychic expressions of what is deepest and strongest and richest within each of us,
being shared: the passions of love, in its deepest meanings.
Beyond the superficial, the considered phrase, “It feels right to me,” acknowledges the strength of the
erotic into a true knowledge, for what that means is the first and most powerful guiding light toward any un-
derstanding. And understanding is a handmaiden which can only wait upon, or clarify, that knowledge, deeply
born. The erotic is the nurturer or nursemaid of all our deepest knowledge.
The erotic functions for me in several ways, and the first is in providing the power which comes from
sharing deeply any pursuit with another person. The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or
intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not
shared between them, and lessens the threat of their difference.
Another important way in which the erotic connection functions is the open and fearless underlining of
my capacity for joy. In the way my body stretches to music and opens into response, hearkening to its deep-
est rhythms, so every level upon which I sense also opens to the erotically satisfying experience, whether it is
dancing, building a bookcase, writing a poem, examining an idea.
That self-connection shared is a measure of the joy which I know myself to be capable of feeling, a re-
minder of my capacity for feeling. And that deep and irreplaceable knowledge of my capacity for joy comes
to demand from all of my life that it be lived within the knowledge that such satisfaction is possible, and does
not have to be called marriage, nor god, nor an afterlife.
This is one reason why the erotic is so feared, and so often relegated to the bedroom alone, when it is rec-
ognized at all. For once we begin to feel deeply all the aspects of our lives, we begin to demand from ourselves
and from our life-pursuits that they feel in accordance with that joy which we know ourselves to be capable of.
Our erotic knowledge empowers us, becomes a lens through which we scrutinize all aspects of our existence,
forcing us to evaluate those aspects honestly in terms of their relative meaning within our lives. And this is a
grave responsibility, projected from within each of us, not to settle for the convenient, the shoddy, the conven-
tionally expected, nor the merely safe.
During World War II, we bought sealed plastic packets of white, uncolored margarine, with a tiny, intense
pellet of yellow coloring perched like a topaz just inside the clear skin of the bag. We would leave the marga-
rine out for a while to soften, and then we would pinch the little pellet to break it inside the bag, releasing the
rich yellowness into the soft pale mass of margarine. Then taking it carefully between our fingers, we would
24. 14 Love and Sex
knead it gently back and forth, over and over, until the color had spread throughout the whole pound bag of
margarine, thoroughly coloring it.
I find the erotic such a kernel within myself. When released from its intense and con-strained pellet, it
flows through and colors my life with a kind of energy that heightens and sensitizes and strengthens all my
experience.
We have been raised to fear the yes within ourselves, our deepest cravings. But, once recognized, those
which do not enhance our future lose their power and can be altered. The fear of our desires keeps them sus-
pect and indiscriminately powerful, for to suppress any truth is to give it strength beyond endurance. The fear
that we cannot grow beyond whatever distortions we may find within ourselves keeps us docile and loyal and
obedient, externally defined, and leads us to accept many facets of our oppression as women.
When we live outside ourselves, and by that I mean on external directives only rather than from our inter-
nal knowledge and needs, when we live away from those erotic guides from within ourselves, then our lives
are limited by external and alien forms, and we conform to the needs of a structure that is not based on human
need, let alone an individual’s. But when we begin to live from within outward, in touch with the power of the
erotic within ourselves, and allowing that power to inform and illuminate our actions upon the world around
us, then we begin to be responsible to ourselves in the deepest sense. For as we begin to recognize our deep-
est feelings, we begin to give up, of necessity, being satisfied with suffering and self-negation, and with the
numbness which so often seems like their only alternative in our society. Our acts against oppression become
integral with self, motivated and empowered from within.
In touch with the erotic, I become less willing to accept powerlessness, or those other supplied states of
being which are not native to me, such as resignation, despair, self-effacement, depression, self-denial.
And yes, there is a hierarchy. There is a difference between painting a back fence and writing a poem,
but only one of quantity. And there is, for me, no difference between writing a good poem and moving into
sunlight against the body of a woman I love.
This brings me to the last consideration of the erotic. To share the power of each other’s feelings is differ-
ent from using another’s feelings as we would use a kleenex. When we look the other way from our experi-
ence, erotic or otherwise, we use rather than share the feelings of those others who participate in the experience
with us. And use without consent of the used is abuse.
In order to be utilized, our erotic feelings must be recognized. The need for sharing deep feeling is a human
need. But within the European-American tradition, this need is satisfied by certain proscribed erotic comings-
together. These occasions are almost always characterized by a simultaneous looking away, a pretense of call-
ing them something else, whether a religion, a fit, mob violence, or even playing doctor. And this misnaming
of the need and the deed give rise to that distortion which results in pornography and obscenity—the abuse of
feeling.
When we look away from the importance of the erotic in the development and sustenance of our power, or
when we look away from ourselves as we satisfy our erotic needs in concert with others, we use each other as
objects of satisfaction rather than share our joy in the satisfying, rather than make connection with our similari-
ties and our differences. To refuse to be conscious of what we are feeling at any time, however comfortable that
might seem, is to deny a large part of the experience, and to allow ourselves to be reduced to the pornographic,
the abused, and the absurd.
The erotic cannot be felt secondhand. As a Black lesbian feminist, I have a particular feeling, knowledge,
and understanding for those sisters with whom I have danced hard, played, or even fought. This deep participa-
tion has often been the forerunner for joint concerted actions not possible before.
But this erotic charge is not easily shared by women who continue to operate under an exclusively
European-American male tradition. I know it was not available to me when I was trying to adapt my con-
sciousness to this mode of living and sensation.
Only now, I find more and more women-identified women brave enough to risk sharing the erotic’s electri-
cal charge without having to look away, and without distorting the enormously powerful and creative nature of
that exchange. Recognizing the power of the erotic within our lives can give us the energy to pursue genuine
change within our world, rather than merely settling for a shift of characters in the same weary drama.
For not only do we touch our most profoundly creative source, but we do that which is female and
self-affirming in the face of a racist, patriarchal, and anti-erotic society.
26. 16 Love and Sex
That deliberate imbalance is more damaging than one might suppose. Beyond the variegated sensations
and the helpful motivations, science has discovered emotionality’s deeper purpose: the timeworn mechanisms
of emotion allow two human beings to receive the contents of each other’s minds. Emotion is the messenger of
love; it is the vehicle that carries every signal from one brimming heart to another. For human beings, feeling
deeply is synonymous with being alive. In this chapter we will explore why.
The Secret Society of Mammals
The first scientist to devote himself to the study of emotion was Charles Darwin. After delivering The Origin
of Species, Darwin wrote three treatises that extended his ideas about evolution and natural selection: The
Variations in Animals and Plants Under Domestication; The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to
Sex; and The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, the last published in 1872. As his title suggests,
Darwin considered emotions an evolutionary adaptation of organisms, no different from a host of other bodily
modifications—claws, legs, stingers, gills, scales, wings. Natural selection should favor emotionality for the
same reason that it does any feature—enhanced survival. Organisms with an advantageous somatic structure
gain a competitive edge and live to pass their genes on to the next generation, while those less equipped fade
into the paleontology texts. In Darwin’s mind, emotions had to be bodily functions that persisted because of
their inherent usefulness. He set about dissecting emotional expressions to discern the underlying biological
utility he was certain they possessed.
After years of cataloguing emotional expressions as carefully as he did the bills of Galapagos finches,
Darwin set out his conclusions. He proposed that the eyebrows lift in surprise to improve ocular mobility and
the extent of the visual field, that the indrawn breath of a startle prepares one for a sudden flight that might
follow, that the upturned lip of a socialite’s sneer is the remnant of a dog’s snarl, in which the animal exposes a
cuspid to warn an opponent of its ferocity. Some of Darwin’s hypotheses regarding the origins of expressions
have scarcely been improved upon; others may strike us as fanciful. But however accurate his assertions about
the profitability of individual expressions may have been, the essence of Darwin’s approach was right on the
mark. Emotions have a biological function—they do something for an animal that helps it to live, and if we
study emotions carefully enough we might find out what.
Unfortunately, Darwin’s evolutionary take on emotionality died an early death. As the study of the mind
was launched at the beginning of the twentieth century, behaviorism soon dominated psychology, as psycho-
analysis reigned over psychiatry. Both disciplines espoused views of emotion that were as distant from the
evolution of terrestrial creatures as the moon. Darwin’s ideas were relegated to obscurity for decades. For over
fifty years, the preeminent theories of emotion in psychology and psychiatry were more philosophy than sci-
ence: they were discussed and debated endlessly, tested rarely, and had only the faintest connection to human
biology. In the mid-1960s, however, a handful of researchers revived Darwin’s original concept of emotion as
a heritable neural advantage. And the discoveries of the new emotion science have reshaped the modern vision
of the mind, human nature, and love.
It’s Not Just an Expression
Thirty years ago, emotion scientists Paul Ekman and Carroll Izard, working separately, confirmed a central
proposition in Darwin’s evolutionary theory of emotions: facial expressions are identical—all over the globe,
in every culture and every human being ever studied. No society exists wherein people express anger with the
corners of the mouth going up, and no person has ever lived who slits his eyes when surprised.An angry person
appears angry to everyone worldwide, and likewise a happy person, and a disgusted one.
Convincing proof of universal emotional expressions came when Ekman reviewed 100,000 feet of movie
film shot of isolated, preliterate tribes in New Guinea. The footage revealed that New Guineans make the same
facial expressions as Americans. Despite differences in dress and appearance, in social milieu and custom, in
climate and environment, and although none of them had ever seen a human being outside his own culture, the
emotional expressions of the New Guinea natives were “totally familiar.”
